Overweight or no?

1. What defines being obese or overweight?

Doctors define being obese as being more than 20% over the expected and healthy weight. This, of course, needs to be adjusted for people who have great amounts of muscle (which weighs a great deal), though people whose muscle puts them over the obese mark are less common than those who are simply obese or overweight. Though this is a rough approximation, it is important to be properly aware of one’s expected weight according to gender, height, and other extenuating circumstances. Properly, the National Institute of Health defines being overweight is having a BMI (the percent of one’s body that is made of fat) of 27.3% or more for women or 27.8% or more for men while the World Health Organization defines being above 25% as overweight. Both define above 30% as being obese.

2. How many people?

In America, it is most commonly believed that approximately 60%-75% of people are overweight or obese. Approximately 25% of the country’s population is considered properly obese. Of these estimates, it is believed that 25 to 32 million (about 13% or more) children and teenagers are overweight or obese. In America, over the past years every category of person has increased its numbers of overweight or obese people except for the adult female category which seems to have stayed steady. Worldwide, the World Health Organization estimates that approximately 1.6 billion adults were overweight, while at least 400 million of these people were obese. By 2015, they project that these numbers will rise to 2.3 billion overweight adults and 700 million obese adults. At least 20 million children under the age of 5 are considered overweight or obese.

3. Which countries are most overweight?

Contrary to popular belief, the United States is not considered the most overweight country, though it does make the top ten. The top ten most overweight countries are almost all in the Pacific Islands, and are, in order, Nauru (number one), Micronesia, The Cook Islands (a free associated state of New Zealand), Tonga, Niue (New Zealand has responsibilities for its external affairs), Samoa, Palau, Kuwait, United States of America, and Kiribati. Most of the island nations suffer from a combination of poor nutrition as a result of the lack of availability of fruits and vegetables, genetic dispositions, and, in some cases, obesity still being as a sign of wealth. In terms of being actually obese, the United States does make the top of the list with nearly a third of the population being obesity, followed by Mexico, the United Kingdom, Slovakia, Greece, Australia, New Zealand, Hungary, Luxembourg, and the Czech Republic. It is notable that the number ten country, the Czech Republic, has less than half the obesity rates of the United States of America.